barking stars

March 10, 2004

Lightning Bolt - Wonderful Rainbow

One day I found myself on the Load Records website and there was an MP3 of a track called Dracula Mountain. You can check it out here. I played this track and was immediately laughing, shaking my head and declaring it a work of genius. And I still stand by this judgement, all three of them.

Lightning Bolt are apparently two guys - one on drums and vocals and the other on bass. While the drummer thrashes around howling through a wall of feedback, the bass is punching out riffs of solid rock and roll gold. My suspicion is that it's Lemmy and Animal from the Muppets. Yes, they really do sound as cool as that suggests.

A love of repetitive metal riffery underpins every track on this record and that's what gives this record such unbelievable energy.


Lightning Bolt: probably look like this
But the most amazing thing about this album is that the repetition never gets boring because they always pull something inspired out of the bag just when a track needs it.

It's not often I go round enthusiastically recommending a CD to anyone who'll listen but this is one exception. Anyway, I'll be off to see these guys supporting The Boredoms next month - if you're in London I'll see you there!

Lightning Bolt Homepage

Lightning Bolt at The Scala

Posted by Ivan at March 10, 2004 11:01 PM
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